The flag, as a symbol of the nation, is not owned by the administration in power, but by the people. We battle over what it means, but all Americans have an equal right to claim the flag as their own. Progressives understand that people can disagree with their government and still love their country and its ideals.
My hope is the president's visit will be appreciated not as merely a president but as a student given a chance to learn, to absorb and come home to a devotion back towards human rights.
By Suzanne M. McCarron and James K. Glassman On July 2, First Ladies from nations across Africa will join First Lady Michelle Obama, President George...
Absent gross mischief to hold down or dilute minority voting, key southern states are on track to shift from red to purple, (Texas, Georgia) and from purple to blue (Florida, North Carolina, Virginia). Other states that used to be reliably Republican such as Colorado are becoming more heavily Democratic thanks both to shifting demographics and changing views on social issues. So we have quite simply a race between demographic and ideological change and flat-out voter suppression. In the 1960s, thanks to the civil rights movement, the liberal wing of a still moderate Republican Party, and Lyndon Johnson's legendary arm-twisting, the great civil rights acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968 passed Congress with a lot of Republican support. It was the Democrats who were split between northern progressives and diehard segregationist Dixiecrats. Today, however, the obstructionists and vote suppressors are all Republicans. Ultimately, this will not be lost on a changing electorate. The forces of anti-democracy have won this round, but if the progressive movement gets itself organized, this victory for Republicans will be Pyrrhic.
We were compared to drug addicts and the mentally ill. We were even preached to that God hates us. Is it any wonder we were all in the closet back then?
For all those who may have temporarily, let's say, forgotten or even denied that there is any substantive difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, this decision should remind you exactly what those differences are.
If reform passes, then it's a double victory, because the weaker the Republican party gets, the stronger our country gets. But either way, the civil war within the Republican party is on, and it's only getting worse.
As both a poet and American citizen, I aspire to voice my concerns more loudly than Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators of the world," specifically regarding Obama's unprecedented covert use of drones to kill thousands in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
In my 25 years in the military there was a never a wink and a nod attitude about child molesters or barracks thieves. The military has to instill the same unforgiving attitude about those who sexually assault their teammates.
Whereas former President Bush and President Obama are ideologically a world apart, their policies toward Middle Eastern conflicts produced the same damning reaction.
The irony is that there was a brief moment a decade ago that the GOP seemed to get it right on immigration reform.
This past weekend, The White House hosted Pixar's filmmakers for a Father's Day screening of Monster's University. The White House movie theater has been the cinema-in-chief to Presidents for the last 70 years. If those walls could talk.
Let's return to the democratic values our country was founded on and stop penalizing the Dixie Chicks for preserving their belief, however unpopular at the time, that the Iraq War and the violence it caused was un-American.
As a progressive, anti-Patriot Act, ACLU supporter, I still find myself among the majority of Americans who are not outraged by the latest revelations of NSA surveillance. It's not for lack of trying.
As he rides through his 1,500-acre ranch, with some of the men he ordered into combat, does he feel responsible for their injuries? Does he second-guess the decisions that led to the war in Iraq?
The editors of the New York Times appear to have forgotten an important principle: The First Amendment is for all of us, and does not grant any special privileges to the institutional press.